The Tragedy of Reason: Towards a Platonic Conception of Logos 0415903165

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Introduction
A. Tragedy
B. Logos
C. Techne
Chapter 1: Logos is Unconditionally Good
A. The Classic Assertion
(1) Aristotle's Vision
(2) The Protreptic Logos
(3) The Indirect Argument
B. The Critique of Logos
(1) Protagoras
(2) Descartes' Provisonal Morality
(3) Spinoza's Critique of Teleology
C. The Response of Logos
(1) The Argument from Self-Reference
(2) Techne and the Good
(3) Poeticism
Chapter 2: Is Logos Unconditionally Good?
A. Cleitophon's Accusation
B. Eros and Logos
C. The Philosopher and the Poet
Chapter 3: Logos is Conditionally Good
A. The Impossibility of Philosophical Dialogue
(1) Philosophical Dialogue
(2) Aristotle and the Principle of Noncontradiction
(3) The Misologists
B. Paradigms of Play
(1) The Athlete and the Child
(2) The Philosopher and the Poet (Continued)
(3) The Protreptic Logos (Continued)
C. Questions
(1) Eros and Logos (Continued)
(2) Asking Questions
Epilogue
Notes

Citation preview

The Tragedy of Reason

The Tragedy of Reason Toward a Platonic Conception of Logos David Roochnik

Routledge New York and London

Dedicated to the Memory of Ben Kaplan (1891-1989) First published in 1990 by Routledge an imprint of Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Inc. 29 West 35 Street New York, NY 10001 Published in Great Britain by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane London EC4P4EE Copyright © 1990 by Routledge, Chapman and Hall, Inc. Printed in the United States of America. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Roochnik, David. The tragedy of reason: toward a Platonic conception of logos / David Roochnik. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 0-415-90315-7. ISBN 0-415-90316-5 (pbk.) 1. Plato-Contributions in doctrine of logos. 2. Reason. 3. Logos. I. Title. 90-31648 B398.L85R66 1990 CIP 128'.3-dc20

British Library Cataloging in Publication Data Roochnik, David The tragedy of reason: toward a Platonic conception of Logos. I. Logic. Theories of Plato I. Title 160.92 ISBN 0-415-90315-7 ISBN 0-415-90316-5 pbk

CONTENTS

Prologue Introduction A. Tragedy B. Logos C. Techne

IX

1 12 18

Chapter 1: Logos Is Unconditionally Good A. The Classic Assertion (1) Aristotle's Vision (2) The Protreptic Logos (3) The Indirect Argument B. The Critique of Logos (1) Protagoras (2) Descartes' Provisional Morality (3) Spinoza's Critique of Teleology C. The Response of Logos (1) The Argument from Self-Reference (2) Techne and the Good (3) Poeticism

23 35 38 45

64 76

82 87 93

Chapter 2: Is Logos Unconditionally Good? A. Cleitophon's Accusation B. Eros and Logos C. The Philosopher and the Poet

108 121

Chapter 3: Logos Is Conditionally Good A. The Impossibility of Philosophical Dialogue ( 1) Philosophical Dialogue (2) Aristotle and the Principle of Noncontradiction (3) The Misologists

140 148 154

v

97

\ I

(:, IN II N I

B. ParadigIlls of Play (l) The Athlete and the Child

\(j1

(2) The Philosopher and the Poet (Continued)

17G

(3) The Protreptic Logos (Continued)

185

C. Questions (I) Eros and Logos (Continued) (2) Asking Questions Epilogue Notes

196

200 203 207

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Financial support from the Earhart Foundation allowed me to devote several summers to this Iowa State University granted me a semester of research leave during which I completed my penultimate draft. I am grateful to many people here in Ames. Conversations, and disagreements, with my colleagues have been instrumental in shaping my views. Working with students has been the critical experience that led to the selection of the texts that I discuss as well as the order in which I discuss them. Steve Pett read an early version of this book and urged me to continue. The encouragement and intelligence of Gina Crandell were a constant help. Rich White, Madeleine Henry, Barry Goldfarb, and Bill Scott read portions of the book and their comments were valuable. Charles Griswold read, and criticized, all of it. His responses were probing, insightful, and always generous. I'm certain that my work is better as a result of the many talks we've had over the years. There is no doubt, however, that all errors and confusions that remain in the pages to follow are my responsibility alone.

VII

PROLOGUE

This book attempts to defend a conception of reason-or to use the Greek word "Iogos"-that 1 contend can be extracted from the dialogues of Plato. The very notion of defending Plato may seem strange. Why would a philosopher enshrined for centuries as "classic" need a defense? A defense against whom and what charge? What does it mean to defend an author so long dead? Can he somehow be revived? In other words, what significance can a defense of Plato possibly attain for a contemporary audience? The classical conception of "logos" (the full meaning of which will be discussed in the introduction below) has been under siege for a long time. At least since Descartes, logos has been attacked for being vague, unproductive, and vastly inferior to the new mathematically based sciences and technologies that were being formulated in the seventeenth century. Descartes was animated by a desire for progress and the conviction that the power and possible benefits of science had been impeded by the dominant position accorded to classical learning in European culture. He attempted to overthrow the rule of logos by redefining what counted as knowledge. In an important sense, he succeeded: there was indeed a "scientific revolution" in which Descartes' assault on logos figured prominently. In the twentieth century, the scientific revolution has, for many, soured. This fact, however, has only led to an increase in the vehemence of the hostility voiced against logos. Critics such as Nietzsche and Heidegger, and most recently Derrida, have accused logos of fathering the Cartesian project. Logos is, for them, ultimately the origin of, and hence culpable for, the life-denying woes of the technological world. And Plato is typically taken to be the undisputed Father of the logos tradition. For such critics, there is an unbroken line leading from Plato to Descartes to biotechnology and word processing. Nietzsche's early book, The Birth of Tragedy, written in 1871, makes this

IX

clear. Here Nietzsche, who was a trained classicist. argues t hat wit h the arrival of Socrates (or Plato), I a terrible transformation occurred ill allcient Greece, one that gave rise to a profound sickness that has subsequently plagued Western culture. A spirit of "theoretical optimism," of hyper-rationalism, took hold and displaced what until then had been the basic and very healthy impulse among the Greeks: the spirit of tragedy. (A full discussion of "tragedy" will be found in the introduction below.) Socrates is the prototype of the theoretical optimist who, with his faith that the nature of things can be fathomed, ascribes to knowledge and insight the power of a panacea, while understanding error as the evil par fxcellence. To fathom the depths and to separate true knowledge from appearance and error, seemed to Socratic man the noblest, even the only truly human vocation. And since Socrates, this mechanism of concepts, judgments, and inferences has been esteemed as the highest occupation and the most admirable gift of nature, above all other capacities." For Nietzsche, the theoretical optimism transmitted by Plato is a virulent disease. By equating knowledge with goodness, Plato ostensibly vilified and repressed other human capacities such as willing, feeling, creating, and playing. By elevating the importance of the mind, he downplayed the wonders of the body, and by searching for a timeless Truth he degraded the indisputable fact of human temporality. Plato set into motion a series of ideas and events that has culminated in a Western culture denuded of life and left only with its dehumanizing science and technology. And again: that of which tragedy died, the Socratism of morality, the dialectics, frugality and cheerfulness of the theoretical man-how now? might not this very Socratism be a sign of decline, of weariness, of infection, of the anarchical dissolution of the instincts?" From a variety of quarters Plato has been dam lied repeatedly as the architect of a hyper-rational and oppressive world. The very word "Platonic" no longer refers only to the historical figure or his work. Instead, it is often used to label traditional Western rationalism itself, with its antiquated and offensive commitment to the Truth. Consider, for example, a remark made in the preface to a volume of essays published in 1987 and significantly titled A/ter Philosophy. Its COllt rii>utors include Rorty, Foucault, Derrida, Habermas, Davidson, Du III III elt , and Putnam. It is clear that they were chosen for their diversity. N evenheless, says the editor, "all are agreed in their opposition to t hl' 'Platonic conception of Truth."" (The last four words of this sentellCl', as well as the procedure

01 (apilalil.ing the first letter of ''Truth'' in order to highlight it with

scorn, are taken from Richard Rorty.)" What is the relationship between the (supposed) "theoretical optimism" inherent in the "Platonic conception of Truth" and Greek tragedy? A good explanation is found in Martha Nussbaum's recent work, The Fragility uf Goodness. She argues that in the Pro/agoras, for example, Plato attempts to develop a "science of practical reasoning." Armed with such knowledge, philosophers could eliminate the suffering caused by moral conflict and escape from the dangers and contingencies that ordinarily seem to plague human life. By contrast, Greek tragedy not only depicts, but also wisely affirms, the vulnerability of human goodness and the very emotions that Plato despises. As a result, Nussbaum agrees with Nietzsche and characterizes the dialogues as "Plato's anti-tragic theater," as "theater purged and purified of theater's characteristic appeal to powerful emotions, a pure crystalline theater of the intellect.",i For Nussbaum, the dialogues, unlike the classical Greek tragedies, are hyper-rational denials or the fragility and uniquely beautiful pathos of being human. To a large extent what follows is a response to Nietzsche and scholars like Nussbaum. In other words, the principal charge against which I shall defend Plato is this: that he is "anti-tragic." I shall do so because I believe that it is an extremely serious accusation. In other words, I agree with Nietzsche and Nussbaum that tragedy is both illuminating and affirming of the value of human life; to deny it, therefore, is a sign of decline, of infection, of a hyper-rationalism gone awry. I further agree, with Nietzsche and his epigones, that the world of twentieth-century science and technology is genuinely dehumanizing and in need of revitalization. I do not believe, however, that Plato is the evil genius lurking behind these developments. Indeed, I think that precisely the Platonic dialogues can supply a revitalizing alternative to the scientific or technical conception of rationality today so predominant. Nietzsche's disciples, many of whom have become quite fashionable and whom I shall call "the subversives," are engaged in a wholesale rejection, or deconstruction, of the Western tradition of reason.' While it is not difficult to sympathize with their dissatisfaction, even their rage, at the technocratic worldview, their own response is no more fulfilling. The Western tradition is not homogeneous. While it may be true that the specifically technical conception of reason developed in the last 400 years is dehumanizing, classical logos is not the culprit. For it is possible, I shall argue, to extract from the Platonic dialogues a conception of logos that is compatible with the life-affirming insights of tragedy.

This book thus reflects three related concerns. The first is with Plato. Through a discussion of a small selection of his works I shall attempt to show that embedded within the dialogues is a "tragic conception of logos." By the end of the book, I hope that the meaning of this phrase will be clear. The second is with Descartes and the founding of the technical conception of reason. I shall show how Descartes attacks and fundamentally alters classical logos. The result is an impoverished conception of reason, one that is unable to do justice to the significance and value of human experience. The third is with the subversives. I shall argue that through a great irony they, the grand deconstructors of Western rationalism, and Descartes, the founding father of the technical conception of reason, hold complementary positions. They can be conceived as two extreme positions that are like "flip sides" of a single coin. The Platonic conception of logos, as I move toward articulating it, will offer a third, a middle way, one that is richer and more humane than the two extreme views flanking it.

A caveat about the strategy that informs this book: What follows is itself an imitation of a dialogue. By setting a series of texts by a wide variety of authors-Sophocles, Aristotle, Plato, Descartes, Spinoza, Heraclitus, Derrida, Rorty, Hesiod, Homer-into opposition with one another, 1 shall attempt to generate a conceptual drama whose goal is to exhibit the nature or structure, which I have already described as tragic, of logos, the main character of the story. I shall follow this approach for the following reasons. I am convinced that the Platonic conception of logos can be of real value, and not just academic interest, for the contemporary debate about the fate of reason. 1 want to exhibit that conception and thereby make it accessible. This, 1 have decided, requires giving voice to a competing set of views and forcing them to confront one another; for such competiton is, I shall argue, of the essence in Plato's thought. The most obvious, and perhaps the most telling, fact about Plato's writings is that he never presents a "theory," a monological argument, about a single specified subject. He only writes dialogues. H It is of course true that the character Socrates is usually the "hero" of his work, but as has been argued many times, it is illegitimate, and perhaps even impossible, simply to equate Plato with any of his characters." All of Socrates' statements-his arguments, assertions, myths, similes, andjokes-are placed in a specifIC dramatic context composed of a particular time and place and a series of characters. Socrates' remarks, therefore, are always addressed to someone for a specific reason and so are conditioned by the contingency of their dramatic context. As a result, it is illegitimate to

1'1{()1.()(;llE

XIII

isolate any given Socratic statement and christen it "Platonic." The full meaning of the statement emerges only as part of a dramatic whole. Beginning with the assumption that the dialogue form is an essential component of Plato's thought, I make two further claims. First, several of Socrates' most critical interlocutors hold views that are significantly similar to those of our own subversives. I refer to sophists such as Protagoras, rhetoricians like Gorgias and Thrasymachus, and a poet (more accurately, a "rhapsode") like Ion. I shall argue that these characters represent positions that prefigure the work of thinkers such as Derrida and Rorty. They were, in other words, ancient versions of the subversives. As a result, the Platonic dialogues are well equipped to comment on contemporary issues. Second, the Platonic conception of logos can only be made intelligible insofar as it emerges from the conflictbetween Socrates and his subversive interlocutors. 10 A sizable portion of what follows is devoted to clarifying and substantiating this assertion. This book is an attempt to extract and to defend the Platonic conception of logos by reproducing such conflict in the form of a series of textual oppositions. If I am correct in my comparison between Socrates' sophistic and poetic interlocutors and the subversives, then it becomes entirely possible that the dialogues can help us, even today, participate in the battles currently being waged over the futufe of reason. A final note on my strategy: The first "scene" of this drama contains a discussion of Aristotle, not Plato. It would be a serious mistake to conflate the two and attribute to them joint authorship of "the classical conception of logos." Their disagreements are profound. Nevertheless, I have used Aristotle to help illuminate what I take to be a critical feature of Plato's thought. Aristotle's vision of the value, range, and security of logos is more comprehensive, and in an important sense more optimistic, than Plato's. II Beginning with Aristotle allows me to show by contrast the great awareness Plato has of the limits ... the tragic limits ... as well as the goodness of logos. In what follows I shall not presuppose any knowledge of Greek philosophy or literature and when a Greek word is used, its meaning will be given. The scholarly references I have chosen to include will be confined to the notes (and largely to works in English). When needed I shall supply the primary text that is under discussion. (Unless noted, translations will be my own and have been formulated with an eye toward readability.) Finally, I shall try to explain what prompted the many transitions from section to section, from text to text, that occur throughout the book. My hope is that anyone willing to think seriously about the issues under

'd\'

1'111 '11 11.\ 'I'

discussion can benefit from this work. More particularly, I would like to address those readers who are troubled by the omnipresence of the technical version of rationality and, as a result, are tempted to join a noted philosopher of science in saying "farewell to reason." I urge such readers to reexamine the tradition they are tempted to abandon and in particular to ask whether, in damning Plato, they have not misidentified their enemy. Is it possible that the Platonic conception of logos, far from representing the theoretical optimism deplored by Nietzsche, includes a tragic awareness of its limits as well as a life-affirming understanding of its goodness?

But what if you were hurled into a time warp and came face to face with the Ancient Greeks. The Greeks invented trigonometry. They did autopsies and dissections. What could you tell an Ancient Greek that he couldn't say "Big Deal." -Don DeLillo, White Noise

xv

INTRODUCTION

A

TRAGEDY

Is there a pessimism of strength? An intellectual predilection for the hard, gruesome, evil, problematic aspect of existence, generated by well-being, by overflowing health, by the fullness of existence? -Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy

Before proceeding into the main current of this work, three terms require explanation. Two appear in the title of this book and the third, more precisely a descendant of the third, already was featured in the prologue. These are "tragedy," "logos," and "techne.") Tragedy was a form of drama that reached its peak in Athens during the fifth century b.c.e. The name itself seems to come from words meaning "goat" and "song." This could indicate that the earliest tragedies, which took place sometime before the fifth century, were performed in contests whose prize was a goat. However, as is true of so much about classical Greek drama, the question of its origins remains obscure. Scholars do not know exactly how or why or when tragedy originated. All that can be said with confidence is that it reached its pinnacle in Athens during the fifth century. Even this assertion, however, needs qualification. From the three great tragedians, Aeschylus (510-450), Sophocles (496-406), and Euripides (476-406), only some thirty-three plays remain. Seven each belong to Aeschylus and Sophocles, nineteen to Euripides. The manner in which these particular plays managed to survive the centuries of transmission is itself noteworthy. The seven each of the two older playwrights were the result of editions compiled by later scholars for use in various schools. Since both authors wrote scores of plays, we cannot be at all certain that the particular plays chosen for the editions were truly representative of their entire corpus. We do not know precisely who chose them or what

criteria they employed. It is obvious, therefore, that we do Ilot havc enough text with which to construct a historically complete or defensihle characterization of either Aeschylus or The situation is slightly better with Euripides. I n addition to an ant hology, we have several more of his plays. These were preserved when a small portion of a complete alphabetized edition was discovered. (Notice how many of E.uripides' plays begin with the English II: Hecuba, I1elf1l, Heraclidae, lIit!t}()iytus).lE.uripides has frequently been described by commentators as the most perplexing of the three tragedians. His work has been most resistant to classification because his tragedies are extraordinarily diverse and often seem quite strange. It is possible, however, that this wide variety is a consequence not of some unique characteristic of Euripides, but of the simple fact that we have so many of his plays. In other words, if more work by Aeschylus had also survived, perhaps we would respond to it with a perplexity similar to that often felt after a study of Euripides.' In short, Greek tragedy was a highly complex and multiplicitous genre, and we simply do not have enough textual data to be confIdent in making generalizations about it. Even with the thirty-three plays that remain it is dangerous to generalize. What, for example, does Euripides' Hecuba have in common with Aeschylus' Oresteia such that both should be called tragedies? It is clear that the safest and historically most prudent course is to speak of Greek "tragedies" and not "tragedy." But this is not typically done. At least since Aristotle (380-320), critics have yearned for a general definition of tragedy. For some reason, this word exerts a strong appeal. "Tragedy," in the hands of Aristotle or even thinkers far less than he, somehow becomes a provocative and luring notion. Why? Because critics can use it to speak about human life as a whole. Tragedy, they say, can tell us something fundamental about ourselves. Aristotle puts it this way when he compares tragic poetry to history: [Tragic] poetry is more philosophical and serious than history. For poetry speaks more about what is universal, while history speaks about what is particular. That which is universal is, for example, what sorts of things a specific type of person will say or do according to what is most probable or even necessary. It is this at which poetry aims (1451b5-10).·'

Tragedy teaches us about types of human beings and general patterns of behavior. It can thus be used as an occasion to comment, not on this or that particular person, but on what it means to be a human being. This is why Aristotle believes that drama should be included as part of a well-crafted educational system. Critics since Aristotle have followed

I N mODI!(.

no!':

:1

his lead alld hooks abound with titles such as The Spirit 01 Tragniy or The Fmgil S('nll' 01 Lirl'.';

As stated above, the relationship between such philosophical or critical vl'\'siolls of tragedy and the hundreds of actual plays that were once performed in Athens is not obvious. Even Aristotle probably did not consider all of them since he wrote over one hundred years after their performance. Despite its enormous inHuence in shaping the critical reception of tragedy, Aristotle's account in his Popties is not a historically verifiable characterization of tragedy. When speaking of "tragedy ," therefore, 1 make no pretense to refer accurately to the hundreds of plays performed some 2,500 years ago. Instead, I have been inspired by a few of those plays, particularly Sophocles' story of Oedipus, to forge a conception of tragedy that 1 believe can be put to good use in articulating a conception of human life and knowledge. "Tragic" is an adjective widely, and poorly, used today. I f a child is struck down by an incurable disease, the reporters call it "tragic." This event is sorrowful, terrible, and catastrophic. But it is not tragic. Tragedy does bespeak sorrow and catastrophe. Its essential movement finds the hero changing from what seems to be a reasonably good state of affairs into a bad one. As Aristotle puts it, tragic drama requires a peripeteia, a reversal or "a complete swing in the direction of the action" (1452a2223).7 The child's death surely does involve a reversal for both the parents and the child. Still, it is not tragic. Aristotle explains that a tragedy must be sparked by an action performed by its hero. This he calls a hamartia, an error or mistake in judgment. This is a very difficult word and notion for scholars to pin down with certainty (1453a10 and a16).H The important point here is that the hero must be at least partially responsible for his catastrophe. He must be causally implicated in the course of his reversal. The child did nothing to bring about her illness, and so her death is not tragic. The hero's hamartia, however, is not the sole or sufficient cause of the reversal. The hero is implicated in a world, in a network of causes and effects, that is not exclusively of his making. There is a dimension of "necessity" or "fate" in the hero's life. His catastrophe is thus as much a consequence of his necessary involvement in a world beyond his control as it is of his own action. It is precisely this duality, this delicate blending, of causes that characterizes tragic catastrophe. This is vague. To clarify, let liS consider Oedipus as an example. (This tends to be Aristotle's procedure as well.)" He is doomed, fated to kill his father and marry his mother. He was not consulted or made aware about this course of events before it occurred. Nevertheless, it is the inescapable fact of his life. But Oedipus is surely no puppet or purely passive victim.

INIIUII'I'.

11 •• t\

He is quite capable of instigating actions on his OWl\. lie hccol\les furiolls at an old man who hits him. He kills the man ill retaliatioll, not knowing that it is his father. This is surely a hamartia (a mistake, not a sin and, given the mores of the time, perhaps not even an egregious character Haw) and it sets into motion the sequence of events that constitute the tragedy. Oedipus is both the active instigator of his tragedy, and its unwitting victim. He was cursed. Suffering was mandated for him. But the consequences of his patricide were brought about by his killing of his father. This is still vague. How can such a contradictory blend of notions, determinism and freedom, fate and human agency, be made compatible? The key notion here is that the tragedy of Oedipus is the story of a man implicated in a context of events only for some of which he is responsible. This context, or structure, includes past events, his hamartia, his character, and his destiny. Oedipus was partially responsible for his downfall; a tragic hero has a history of which he is in only part author. This description of the dual causal network in which the hero is implicated remains vague and perhaps contradictory. Furthermore, it is not particularly informative about tragic drama, for even if it is true, then presumably it should apply to all human beings. In order for a tragic drama to become truly dramatic, the hero has to be more than an ordinary human being. As Aristotle puts !t, he must be renowned and successful, as well as a decent human being. These characteristics are necessary in order for his reversal to have an emotional impact on the audience. More precisely, the hero must be sufficiently good so that his reversal will cause the audience to feel pity. On the other hand, the hero should not be so good that his reversal seems to the audience to be arbitrary and a perverse trick of a cruel world. He must be sufficiently good so that his downfall is not caused by his evil or vice (but by his hamartia and fate), but not exceptionally good. (See 1453a7-12.) He must be a man whom the audience can admire but still can identify as being one of their own. Precisely this combination of characteristics is found in Oedipus. He is a good king and highly regarded by his citizens. But as one character says to him, "Neither I nor these children sitting here at your throne in supplication equate you with a god. Instead, we judge you to be first among men in the fortunes of life and in the dealings with the world above (31-34)."1" The tragic hero, while identifiably human, has a certain drive or impetus to act on a grand scale that sets him apart from other men. He is impelled by an urge for some form of greatness. The hero pushes to the fullest extent of his power his ability to act. He then collides with the

I r

to distinguish correct from incorrect laws (proposition 3). Only if there

is a true advantage is it possible to assert that a ruling body sometimes mistakenly chooses a course leading to its real disadvantage. One can make a mistake only if there is some standard by which correct and incorrect laws can be measured. In this case, the standard is real advantage. Cleitophon has seen a tension inherent in Thrasymachus' position. First, there is Thrasymachus' relativism. He believes that values gain their validity or meaning solely through the ruling body that enforces them. When he states (proposition 5) that it is just to obey all laws, whether they are correct or not, he implies that justice is simply obedience to the laws posited by any given regime. This is relativistic because it offers no way of justifying laws except through the fact that they are laws of a specific regime. In this view, no law is good in and of itself; it is "good" only relative to the ruling body that makes it. There is, however, a second, countervailing tendency in Thrasymachus' position. He relies on an objective standard, the ruler's real advantage, to differentiate correct from incorrect laws. If, for example, it would be advantageous for regime A to raise taxes, but due to an an erroneous analysis it does not do so, then obedience to the tax laws of the land would in fact be disadvantageous to the regime. In Thrasymachus' account, obedience to the laws of regime A would be both unjust (1, 4, 6) and just (2 and 5). The point is this: As a rhetorician, Thrasymachus believes that he can teach rulers how to identify and then achieve what is really to their advantage. He believes he has a techne to do this. 6H He wants, in other words, to charge his techne with value; he thinks it good and well worth paying for. As a result, Thrasymachus retains a commitment to some measure of and to the notion that there are some standards of which only a few have knowledge. On the other hand, he is also committed to relativism: he does not believe that any law is in itself good or bad. Socrates' argument is meant to show that he can't have it both ways: these two commitments do not cohere. Cleitophon offers Thrasymachus a way out of his dilemma by suggesting that the initial definition of justice be changed from "advantage of the stronger" to "that which the stronger believes is his advantage." These two formulations are critically different. The former affirms some objective standard by which to measure real advantage. The latter, which radicalizes the moderate relativism latent in the former, does away with such standards for it does away with the possibility of error altogether: if justice is simply what the ruler believes is advantageous, then the ruler is never wrong.

LOGOS

Is

UNCON[)JTIONALLY

GOOD

91

Thrasymachus ignores Cleitophon's friendly appeal. Again, this is because he thinks he possesses a valuable techne worth paying for. He wants to preserve the possibility of the ruler making mistakes because he wants to preserve his own position as a teacher of potential rulers. Instead of following Cleitophon's advice he takes an altogether different line against Socrates. The challenge for Thrasymachus is to explain how the possibility of error (the making of incorrect/disadvantageous laws) can be reconciled with relativism. He does this by saying that the person with a techne, insofar as he has a techne, simply does not err. Unlike opinion or mere belief, knowledge (and techne is surely that), in the most precise sense of the word, does not err. The doctor, as a doctor, does not make mistakes. When she does make a mistake she, at the very moment of erring, does not really (precisely) possess the techne of medicine. Analogously, if a ruler, who is presumed by Thrasymachus to have a techne, errs, at that very moment of erring, he does not really have the techne of ruling. This would remove the problem Socrates has detected by removing proposition (3). Socrates is quite willing to go along with Thrasymachus' very stringent conception of a techne. He is glad to see Thrasymachus affirm his allegiance to techne because, as the next argument will show, precisely such an affirmation will eventually cause the Sophist's downfall. (I)

The doctor (the one in precise speech, the one with a techne who does not err) cares for the sick.

(2) The pilot of the ship cares for the sailors. (3) Therefore, objects. tig

all technai are directed toward the advantage of their

(4) Therefore, no techne considers its own advantage. (5) Justice is a techne. (6) Therefore,justice

does not consider its own advantage (341c5-342e8).

Again, the initial definition of justice, the advantage of the stronger, has to be rejected because it leads to inconsistent results. The point of these refutations is this: Thrasymachus' initial definition of justice is a formulation of relativism. At the same time, Thrasymachus is a kind of technicist. 7u He describes justice as a type of techne so that he may teach potential rulers how to rule. Socrates will not allow him to be both a technicist and a relativist. The first argument pins him down on the issue of incorrect laws. I t shows that he is not a thorough relativist; a dimension of evaluative objectivity remains in his position. The second exploits a basic principle about techne: it is oriented to an object other

9:1

LOGOS

Is

UNCONDITIONALLY

GOOD

than itself. Medicine, for example, studies the workings of human bodies; it does not study medicine (or the doctor). Carpentry studies the properties of wood; arithmetic studies number. Techne is not "self-reflexive;" it is "objective," directed to an object other than itself. Because it cannot reflect upon itself or its possessor, because it knows nothing about the human context in which its results appear, it is value-neutral. Thrasymaelms defines justice as a techne that can secure the ruler's advantage. This implies that a techne can be charged with value. Socrates' argument is meant to show that it cannot. Socrates has a similar argument with Thrasymachus' teacher, Gorgias (in the Gorgias). First, he makes sure that the famous rhetorician admits that he has a techne (449a). Then, he persuades him to agree that a basic characteristic of a techne is that it have a determinate object. Gorgias is quite reluctant to do this, but Socrates is persistent, repeatedly asking him to identify specifically what his techne is about (449dl, d9, 451a6). Finally, Gorgias relents and says it is about "the just and unjust" (454b7). The next move that Gorgias makes, the one that will seal his doom, is to assert that techne is value neutral. His example is wrestling. A person who learns how to wrestle can use his knowledge well or use it to beat up his mother (456e). If he chooses to do the latter, neither the teacher nor the techne itself should be blamed (456d-457c). The techne, after all, is neutral on the question of use. A similar situation obtains with rhetoric. If Gorgias teaches a student the techniques of artful persuasion which the student then employs to argue for an unjust cause, neither Gorgias nor rhetoric should be blamed. The problem with Gorgias' position is that justice, the professed object of his own techne, is by definition not a neutral item. A student who studies with Gorgias will learn justice. Such a man will be just and cannot be unjust. Gorgias' claim to a techne, which is value-neutral, whose object is justice, doesn't make sense (460a-461 b). These Socratic refutations are instructive. Many people, especially professors, profess to be relativists. At the same time, they want to be rewarded, or congratulated, or recognized, for their knowledge. They want to write books and be paid to give lectures that will win applause. To do this they almost invariably have to conform to the dictates of techne, the most easily recognizable form of knowledge. As a result, there is a tension within their work that can be exploited by a man like Socrates in order to bring about their downfall. Of course, the refutations do not prove that relativism is false. They only show what happens when a Sophist's relativism is torIlIlliatt'd and

L()(;os Is

UNCONDITIONALLY

GOOD

professed in a certain manner. If the Sophist is clever and strong enough, he can avoid Socratic refutation. Much of what was discussed in section I.B.1. about Protag'Oras and his relationship to techne was meant to suggest this. Protagoras is a more advanced thinker than either Thrasymachus or Gorgias. He understood well Socrates' strategy. Socrates began his assault on the Sophist with the techne-analogy. He wanted to pin Protagoras down in the same manner that he pins Thrasymachus and down. But this he failed to do, for Protagoras never allowed himself to be caught in the Socratic trap; he never dearly claimed to have a techne whose subject is arete. He understood the nature of his own relativism well enough to realize that capitulating to Socrates' repeated insistence that he do so would lead to his defeat. Thus he hedged on the techne question: he aligned himself with techne, but only superficially in order to give his mathema, his subject, the veneer of being something teachable. When he was pushed, he distanced himself from techne and, as a result, avoided the kind of tension that Socrates finds in Thrasymachus. Protagoras hedged, but beautifully and to his greatest advantage. By examining the strategy with which Socrates places his opponent's claim into an analogy with medicine, arithmetic, and so forth, we can see the pivotal role techne plays in his thinking. Socrates believes techne can be good. He is not a technicist because he also believes that there is some good that can be known by some (presumably) nontechnical form of knowledge. This latter knowledge is "higher" than techne; that is, it is capable of making knowledgeable judgments about techne, about the use of its products, its value, its meaning, its human significance. Socrates is quite pleased when a sophistic opponent such as Thrasymachus or Gorgias professes to have a techne. (In a similar manner, I was quite pleased when Rorty insisted that he was right.) By professing this the Sophist implicitly claims to know what is good. Therefore, by claiming a techne, the Sophist sets up within himself an obstacle to his own relativism. Relativism is the real enemy, and the fact that some relativists affirm the goodness of techne can be exploited in the fight against them. (3)

Poetic ism

Protagoras, Descartes, and Spinoza finally agree on one crucial point: Human beings make their own values, meanings, and purposes. They agree that the human world is produced by human activity. As such, they can each be called "poeticists." This word comes from the Greek "poiein," meaning (among other things) "to make" or "to produce." The most familiar English word derived from poiein is "poet," which for us has a vt'l'y narr()w IIl1'aning: I t refers to a writer of poems. The Greek word

94

LO(;os Is

UNCONDITIONALLY

GOOD

can have a similarly narrow meaning: Homer was a poietes, a poet. But the Greek can also be much broader and refer to all who make, to prod uctive activity in general. "Poeticism," as I use the term, is the doctrine that the human world is manufactured by human "poets" or "producers." Since human beings vary from time to time and place to place, poeticism implies that the human world is in a state of Aux. It is, therefore, a variation on the theme of relativism. The poeticism in Protagoras' story is quite apparent for it clearly describes man as man-the-maker. Proto-techne, the intellectual capacity to produce, is what allows human beings to survive and become unique among the animals. Language, the polis, religion, and all the cultural phenomena that occupy the uniquely human realm of significance, are produced. Protagoras himself alludes to the kinship his version of sophistry has with poetry (in the narrow sense) by saying that Homer and Hesiod were in fact disguised versions of Sophists (see 316d). Descartes and Spinoza are quite different from Protagoras in that they are hyper-rationalists; they view the world of matter in motion, which came to be known as the physical world, not as a result of human production, but as something "out there" to be analyzed by the tools of modern mathematical physics. But, as has been argued, there is a flip side to their view. In addition to being proponents of modern science, they are Sophists as well: their hyper-rationalism generates in its train the notion that the human world, the world of cities and values and purposes, is governed only by the rules of provisional morality. According to Descartes, we "make do" with the conventions that have been sanctioned by custom and law. Such conventions are not to be scrutinized or evaluated under the categories of true, false, better, worse; they are to be used to supply a comfortable survival to the Cartesian scientist who does not want to be interrupted in his quest for the laws of physics. Spinoza, by rejecting teleology as completely as he does, by interpreting the ordinary human urge to discover purposes in nature as erroneous anthropomorphism, states that such purposes are made: "Final causes are nothing but human fictions," he says. As such, both he and Descartes finally must confess to a very sophistic, poeticist, view of the human world." The true quarrel, the real conflict, animating this story is between logos and poeticism. This is something Plato understood full well. In the Republic he mentions "the old quarrel (diaphora) between philosophy and poetry" (607b5). (Philosophy here can substitute for "logos.") The reason that this dispute is so old, so fundamental, is that it is between two of the most basically different and extreme views of the human world that can be held. Is the world made by human productive energy, or is it somehow

LOGOS

Is

UNCONDITIONALLY

GOOD

95

structured by entities that exist independently of human choice? Is man the measure? If so, then the human world is subject to endless shifts and changes. Human freedom and the power to create become the most cherished of gifts. Or is the world constituted by a stable set of objective standards that somehow reside in the world outside of human agency and thus function as natural goals by which we can measure our activity? The history of Western thought, as complex and elaborate as it is, is so often just the debate on this single question. That certainly is true today. Rorty and Derrida, as complex as their views seem to be, finally can be described as poeticists. For them, there are no enduring nonhuman structures accessible to human reason. Instead, the structures that exist are temporary things, fleeting, changing, ever different, present and then absent. They are a product of "conversation," says Rorty. They are a product of "writing," says Derrida. The human world according to the subversives is fabricated and final causes but fictions. A remarkable thread unifying today's subversives is the fact that they share a common enemy: the ancient philosopher Plato who is identified by them as the champion of logos, the purveyor of a world of eternal, unchanging, forms. A good example of the extent to which Plato has been vilified was already noted in the Prologue. There a remark from a recent book titled After Philosophy was quoted. Speaking of the many contributors to this volume, the editor states, "all are agreed in their opposition to the 'Platonic conception of Truth.' ,,72 "The Platonic conception of Truth" here means the belief that logos should seek to articulate the stable, nonproduced, structures and values that give shape to the human world. It is condemned as life-denying, as contemptuous of the creative plurality of voices that constitute human history. The ancient dispute thus takes the form, even today, of a battle between Platonism and poeticism. As will become apparent in the following two chapters, I think the subversives are wrong in their understanding and evaluation of Platonism. In general I think they have too thoroughly assimilated Plato to Aristotle. It is indeed true that Plato stands opposed to the subversive's poeticism. But he does not do so in the same way as his student. Aristotle is the great theoretician who articulates a vision of a world in which natural and stable structures can be rationally discovered. His is the most optimistic and richest view of the possibilities of logos. Plato is quite different. Most telling is the fact that he writes dialogues that are themselves a kind of poetry. We will see that for him logos is a more questionable, less assertive, and in this sense less happy affair than it is for Aristotle. When viewed from the perspective of the contemporary subv('J"sive or Cartesian, it is indeed true that Plato and Aristotle are united

96

Loc;os Is

UNCONDITIONALLY

Cocm

in their defense of logos. But this does not imply that they fully share a conception of what logos is. The meaning of "logos" thus has started to shift, away from Aristotle and toward Plato. I hope that as this story further unfolds the Platonic conception of logos will be understood as different, not only from what is typically taken to be "the Platonic conception of Truth," but also from the Aristotelian vision that was discussed in the first section of this book. Logos argues that all three of its accusers are led to poeticism. It screams that this is finally unacceptable. Why? Because poeticism leads to nihilism, the rejection of all value. Poeticism interprets all values as the product of the creative energies of the value-makers. And these change. Values finally become a matter only of which creator has the most power to impose his particular version of value on the rest of us. There is nothing (nihil) with which such creativity can be measured or regulated. Anything goes; everything is in principle legitimate; it doesn't matter what values are created, only whether or not they can be successfully imposed. Poeticism implies that the human world is nothing but a flowing stream of ever-changing values. The flow never ceases, it takes with it all hopes and goals. This is madness, nihilism, and the degradation of human life; this is pollution. And logos is enraged. Are we to succumb to the flimsy and fickle whims of creativity, or to something more stable and enduring that can give our lives meaning? That is the question: and the reader can now predict the response of logos.

CHAPTER

Is

LOGOS

UNCONDITIONALLY

A

CLEITOPHON'S

2

GOOD?

ACCUSATION

Even after having undergone the attacks leveled against it, logos can still assert (with confidence, with vigor), "I am unconditionally good. I represent what is best about being human. Without me you are left only with poetry and doomed to a life of insignificance, unhappiness, and disease." Logos has weathered its storm. And yet ... We have seen cracks, potentially vulnerable openings in the shield of logos. (The techne-analogy that Socrates foists upon unsuspecting opponents ... and Protagoras' artful dodge of it; the fact that logos failed to clarify, and perhaps even begged the question on, its guiding premise in the protreptic and indirect arguments; the defensiveness that has characterized logos's response; and finally, Cleitophon's suggestion to Thrasymachus.) The confrontation between logos and its accuser, this throwing back of charge and countercharge; is it but a squaring off and a screaming of two separate and hostile voices? If so, there would be nothing particularly distinctive about it; people with opposed views yell at each other all the time. But this particular confrontation is unique for two reasons. First, it represents two fundamentally different ways of looking at the world, both of which deserve to be taken seriously. Second, as we will slowly see, this is a dispute that neither party can win. Plato, more than any other philosopher, understands the nature of this most fundamental of disputes. He understands that both sides of the ancient quarrel are powerful and have merit. Plato is indeed a champion of logos; Socrates is his hero. But, perhaps surprisingly, Plato is not the single-minded proponent of the "Platonic conception of truth" that the subversives make him out to be. The Platonic conception of logos (of which this book is finally intended to be an exhibition) acknowledges and t hell illcorporales within itself the voice of its accuser. Plato understands

yH

Is

LO(;OS UNCONDITIONALLY

GOOD?

the terrible precariousness oflogos' assertions. Rather than simply deLiaring its unconditional goodness, he is willing to ask, "is logos in fact unconditionally good?" Platonic logos is willing to look at itself critically, suspiciously. And the result is a form of logos unlike any other, one that has neither the calm assurance of Aristotle, nor the utter distaste for reason found among the subversives. Both of these are univocal, singularly voiced. But Plato's voice, always expressed in the form of a dialogue, is complex. It praises and then seeks the Truth, but it does not claim to know it. It recommends the life of logos, but does not suppress or forget the voice of its accuser. Some indication of what I am talking about can be gathered from Plato's very short dialogue, the Cleitophon. Here the same character who in the Republic offered Thrasymachus a way of avoiding Socrates' refutation is the speaker. What follows is a translation of the dialogue in almost its entirety. I Plato's Cleitophon

406a

Socrates: Someone has just now told me that Cleitophon, son of Aristonymos, when he was conversing with Lysias, condemned the time he spent with Socrates, while he praised his association with Thrasymachus to the skies. Cleitophon: Socrates, this fellow did not correctly relate to you the conversations I had about you with Lysias. For while it is true that with respect to some matters I did not praise you, with respect to others I did. And since, even though you pretend not to care, you are obviously blaming me, I would gladly recount these conversations to you myself so that you don't think that I am badly disposed to you. After all, the two of us are alone. For it's possible that you didn't hear the story correctly and so you're harder on me than you should be. So, if you allow me the chance to speak frankly, I'd accept it gladly and be willing to speak.

407a

Socrates: all, you're way I am the latter

It would be shameful of me not to accept your offer. After

eager to benefit me. For it's clear that once I know in what worse and in what way better, I will pursue and exercise and Hee the former to the best of my ability.

Please listen. Socrates, during the many times that I've associated with and listened to you, I've often been astonished, for in comparison with the run of men you seemed to speak so beautifully. Whenever you rebuked men you sang like a god on the tragic stage saying, "To where, men, do you think you are going? Don't you know that whoever among you invests his entire energy to making money does not do what he should? For your sons, those to whom YOll will Cleitophon:

Is

407c

LOGOS UNCONDITIONALLY

GOOD?

99

pass on your wealth, you do not provide teachers of justice who can teach them how to use their wealth properly- assuming, of course, that justice is something that can be taught. And if justice is something to be practiced and exercised, you do not provide your sons with those who will exercise and practice properly with them. Finally, you have not attended to yourselves in this regard. But when you see that you yourselves, as well as your sons, are sufficiently knowledgeable about grammal' and culture and gymnastic, which subjects you suppose to comprise a complete education in excellence (arete), and yet you are no less vicious concerning money, how is it that you do not despise your current education and seek someone who will help you overcome this lack of real culture?" "Indeed, it is on account of this dissonance and indolence, and not on account of some problem you might have playing the lyre, that brother deals inharmoniously with brother, and cities fight without measure and do and suffer the worst possible things to one another. ...

407e

Socrates, when I hear you saying these things, I admire them greatly and I praise them wonderfully. And I also praise you when you utter the follow-up to this speech, when you say that the ones who exercise their bodies and disregard their souls are disregarding that which ought to rule and taking too seriously that which ought to be ruled; and when you say that if someone doesn't know how to use something it is better for him to give up using that thing. For example, if someone doesn't know how to use his eyes or ears or any other part of his body, it is better for him neither to hear nor see nor put any other part of his body to any use whatsoever.

408a

This point is especially true concerning techne. For whoever does not know how to use his own lyre clearly does not know how to use that of his neighbor; and whoever doesn't know how to use the lyre of others, does not know how to use his own. And this applies to the use of any other instrument or possession. This speech (logos) of yours also ends beautifully when you say that it is better for one who doesn't know how to use his soul to keep his soul quiet and not to live and act on his own. And if such a man has to live, it is better for him to spend his life as a slave rather than as a free man. He should hand over the rudder of his intellect, just as if it were the rudder of a ship, to someone else who knows the techne of steering human beings. This techne you, Socrates, have often called "the techne of politics," saying that it is the same as judging and justice. I must say that I have hardly ever spoken a word against these or any of your similarly fine speeches. You claim that arele is teachable and it is IH'cessary for us most of all to he concerned with ourselves.

IO()

Is Lo(;os

40Hc

UNCO)\;DITIONALLY

Coon?

Nor do 1 think that at some future point will I say anything against these most beautiful and protreptic speeches . .J ust as if we were sleeping, they wake us up.

Next, 1 was determined to hear what follows these initial remarks. At first, however, I did not ask you, Socrates, but your contemporaries and fellow enthusiasts, or comrades, or whatever these fellows should be called. First I interrogated those among this group who are held in highest regard by you. I asked, "what is the logos that comes next?" I imitated your manner and asked them, "Best of men," I said, "how do YOll interpret the protreptic speech in which Socrates exhorts you toward are/I'? Do you think that this speech alone is all he has and that it is impossible for us to comprehend and grasp the issue completely? Will this be our life-work, to "protrepticize" those who have not yet been "protrepticized?" And will these latter men simply follow suit and protrepticize others? Or should we ask ourselves, 40He 'what comes next?' We might agree that men ought to do this very thing ... but what comes next? How do we explain how the study of justice should begin?"

409a

"It's as if someone noticed that we were just like children who had no idea what gymnastic and medicine were and then protrepticized us to be concerned for our bodies. This person would censure us by saying that it is shameful to be so concerned about wheat and barley and vineyards and however many other things we do and possess for the sake of the body, while at the same time to have neither a techne nor a procedure by which the body might become as good as possible. For such a techne does exist. And if we were to ask the man protrepticizing us, 'what are these technai?' he would probably answer that they were gymnastic and medicine. In an analogous fashion, we now ask, 'what is the techne concerned with the areie of the soul?' Let it be explained." The fellow who seemed to be most vigorous in this group responded to these questions and said that this techne is the very one that you hear about from Socrates; it is none other than justice. To this I said, "Don't. just tell me its name, but answer me in the following way: someone might say that medicine is a techne. That which issues from this techne is two-fold. On the one hand, there is the continual production of doctors in addition to those who already existed. On the other hand, there is health. The latter, what we call health, is not itself a techne, but is the product (ergon) of that techne which both teaches and is taught. 2 The techne 01 carpentry is similar. Houses are its product and the techne of carpentry is its teachable content.·' "Now, let justice be analogous in one respect: it produces just lllt"ll as do each of the technicians mentioned abovt'. But call W(' idl'lltilv

Is Locos

UNCONDITIONALLY

Coon?

101

the other element, namely that product which the just man is ahle to produce? Tell me." 409c

40ge

410a

As I recall, this fellow answered, "the advantageous." Another one said, "the proper;" another, "the beneficial; and another, "the profitable." I then went back a step and said, "But these names, 'act correctly, be profitable, beneficial, etc.,' are found in each oithe technai. But to what all these names refer each techne will articulate a unique something. For example, carpentry will use 'well, beautifully, propedy,' specifically with regard to the production of wooden artifacts, which are not themselves the teLlllle. Let the product of justice be articulated in a similar fashion." Finally, Socrates, one of your comrades who was reputed to speak in the most refined manner, answered me and said that this was the unique product of justice: to create friendship in the cities. When this fellow was asked, he said that friendship is good and never bad. Furthermore, he said that although we apply the name to them, the "friendships" of children and beasts are not genuine friendships. For it had occurred to him that such relationships are more often harmful than good. To avoid the untenable conclusion that would follow, he said that these relationships were inappropriately described as friendships. For the most truly genuine friendship is obviously likemindedness. When asked if likemindedness means having like opinions or knowledge, he first of all debunked like opinions, for it is necessary that many harmful like opinions arise among men. By contrast, he agreed that friendship is entirely good and the product of justice. The conclusion, he said, was that likemindedness and knowledge, and not opinion, are the same. At this point we were at a real impasse in the logos, and those who were present were ready to strike at that man and say that the logos had run around in a circle and returned to where it began. They said, "medicine is also a type of likemindedness as are all the technai. Furthermore, the other technai are able to articulate what it is they are about. Whatever the subject matter is of justice or likemindedness, about which you've been speaking, it has eluded us and it is unclear what its product really is." Finally, Socrates, I raised these questions with you yourself. You told me that justice is hamling your enemies and helping your friends. BUllateI' it seemed that thejust man, since everything he does is for someone's benefit, never harms anyone. I endured and persisted with these questions, and not just once or twice, hut a great many times. But finally I gave up. For I reached the conclusion that of all men you are able most beautifully to protrepticizc others into being concerned for are/e. However, I decided Ih;11 Ollt' of two altel'II;ltives had 10 hold: either you were able to do

Is

LOGOS UNCONDITIONALLY

4lOc

GOOD?

only this and nothing more. This is a situation which could come about in any other techne. For example, someone who is not a pilot of a ship could study carefully and compose a eulogy about the great worth of piloting to humanity. This could happen with any of the other technai as well. Someone could perhaps lay upon you the same charge about justice, namely that even though you praise justice beautifully, you are not the least bit knowledgeable about it. Of course, this is not my opinion. As I said, one of two alternatives has to hold. Either you do not know or you're not willing to share your knowledge with me. Therefore, I think I'll go over to Thrasymachus, and whomever else I can, since I am at such a loss. It's as if I had been protrepticized to study gymnastic and not to disregard my body. Directly following the protreptic logos, you would tell me what sort of regimen my body, which has a particular nature, requires. If only you would desist from your protreptic speeches and give me an analogous account of justice.

410e

Now let it be stated that Cleitophon agrees that it is ridiculous to be concerned with extraneous matters while disregarding the soul, that for the sake of which we go through all our labors. And suppose also that I agree with all the consequences that follow from this initial statement. And while I am speaking I am in no way asking you to behave differently, so that I will continue to praise you in some respects to Lysias and others. But in other respects, I will blame you. Because, Socrates, I will declare that for the man who has not yet been protrepticized, you are most worthwhile. But for the man who has already been protrepticized, you are virtually an impediment in the quest for complete arete and happiness.

What is unique, and surprising, about the Cleitophon is that it is almost exclusively a criticismof Socrates. This fact led many scholars of the past to claim that it was not written by Plato himself, that it was "spurious.,,:l After all, they asked, why would Plato write a dialogue in which Socrates, his great hero, the champion of logos, falls silent in the face of the charges leveled at him by Cleitophon? I propose that these critics missed something essential about the Platonic conception oflogos. Incorporated within it is a dimension of profound self-criticism. Included within it is precisely Cleitophon's accusation. Cleitophon states that he both praises and criticizes Socrates. He praises him for composing the finest of protreptic speeches. He enjoys listening to Socrates rebuke other men for not caring enough about arete or excellence. Instead of asking, how can I live the best possible life?, most men spend their time trying to make money. Instead of seeking- a real education, most men simply accept conventional wisdom and do IIOt probe seriously the value and nature of their lives. No olle is betler at

Is

LOGOS UNCONIJITIONALLY

GOOD?

103

encouraging such men to cease relying on traditional and thoughtless opinions than Socrates. No one is better at turning men toward the project of logos. Socrates provides rousing, pointed speeches and Cleitophon admires them. Apparently, he shares with Socrates a deep dissatisfaction with traditional wisdom and is willing to step beyond the dictates of convention in order to seek actively the good life. Cleitophon, however, has been consistently disappointed with "what comes next." Socrates is wonderful at waking men up and encouraging them to pursue arete, but he fails miserably when it comes to actually explaining to Cleitophon what justice, what the good life that he praises so beautifully, really is. It is as if someone constantly exhorted him to take care of his body, but failed to teach him or explain the technai of medicine and gymnastic. Without such explanation the exhortation becomes empty: even if he is "converted" and decides to care about his body, how would he know how to do so properly? Analogously, men can be turned by Socrates toward the project of caring about the well-being of their souls, but without some techne to direct this caring, Socrates' protreptic is incomplete. Cleitophon employs the very techne-analogy Socrates himself is accustomed to use: As medicine is to health so justice (interpreted as a techne) is to X. Socrates cannot identify the X, the determinate object or result (ergon) of the purported techne and so, as Cleitophon says in conclusion, his value is limited. Socrates is fine, but only for those who are asleep and not yet protrepticized; he can wake these people up. For those who have already been persuaded to question conventional wisdom, and actively seek the good life, he is worthless; he cannot properly identify the techne to which he apparently points. In sum, Cleitophon admires Socrates' ability to encourage his listeners to ask questions about living a good life. Finally, however, he rejects Socrates because he provides no definite, no technical answers to these questions. As a result of his dissatisfaction, Cleitophon has decided to give up on Socrates and turn toward Thrasymachus; he has given up on logos and turned toward rhetoric. In an important sense, Cleitophon's accusation is similar to that leveled by Descartes: traditional philosophy, logos, is nothing but protreptic. The ancient philosophers, says Descartes, "place virtues on a high plateau and make them appear to be valued more than anything else in the world, but they do not sufficiently instruct us about how to know them" (p. 8). Like Descartes, Cleitophon holds to a singular standard of what counts as knowledge. For him it is techne; clear, certain and reliable knowledge. I Socrates' protreptic speeches, while stirring, are for him no more than a passionate description of the goodness of logos. They promise much, but teach l1othing. As a result, they are like palaces built upon sand. Socrates

104

Is LO(;os

UNCONDITIONALLY

GOOD?

praises speeches that he promises will come later. "Pursue logos," he urges, "for it is the source of the good life. Seek the logos of justice itself, goodness itself, beauty itself. Care about your life, your soul; don't just obey orders. Leave the herd and enter into philosophy. Ask questions. Speak and speak some more." "But where are these further speeches?" asks Cleitophon. "What comes next? Why can't you straightforwardly tell me what justice is? What can't you give me the techne by which I can guide my soul in conformity with reason? I want answers and not just more questions." Socrates urges others to want knowledge about values, about justice. His praise of that desire is beautiful and stirring. But that is all. Instead of teaching he only redirects, or even manipulates, the desires of his audience. He seduces them to philosophy. Philosophy is the desire for being able to say what justice is. If, however, the answer to this question is never given, a desire is all that philosophy is. Cleitophon implies that there is a basic similarity between sophistry and philosophy: both manipulate their audiences' desires. (Descartes implies this as well by saying of philosophy that it "provides the means of speaking with probability about all things and of being held in admiration by the less learned" [pg. 6].) There is, however, one crucial difference between them: the Sophist acknowledges this (either overtly, as does Callides, or covertly, as does Protagoras). He admits that his goal is not the truth, but the production of opinions in others. The philosopher, on the other hand, dissembles, or simply does not understand himself. He purports to seek the truth, to be able to articulate what justice is. This, however, he does not actually accomplish, for his speeches are really only protreptic. The philosopher urges his audience to pursue an impossible goal. Given this similarity and this difference, Cleitophon finds sophistry more attractive. It is, in his eyes, more honest and promising. Since he will never accomplish anything of substance with philosophy and Socrates, he turns to sophistry and Thrasymachus. At least here, armed with the weapon of rhetoric, he will be able to pursue effectively what seems to be his own self-interest.

Socrates falls silent in the face of Cleitophon's charge. Why doesn't he refute, or at least respond to, it? Answering this question, I suggest, will tell us much about the nature (and the limits) of logos. Cleitophon is a powerful interlocutor, and to understand fully his accusation we should turn back to his short speech in the Rrpublic which was discussed above. Thrasymachus, it may be recalled, was a victim of Socratic refutation. He was defeated by Socrates because he (incoherently) mailltailled both

Is Locos

UNCONOITIONALLY

Gouo?

a positive evaluation of techne and his own version of relativism. Cleitophon made a short appearance in that dialogue. He proposed to Thrasymachus that he substitute "what seems to be the advantage to the ruler" for "what is the advantage to the ruler" in his definition of justice. In other words, he proposed that Thrasymachus get rid of all vestiges of objectivity in his account of justice and become a "radical" or thorough relativist. This tactic would have saved Thrasymachus from refutation, for it would have removed one of the two cuntradictory poles that Socrates detects and then exploits. Thrasymachus, however, rejected Cleitophon's friendly advice. He is, after all, a professional teacher who wants to claim for himself a techne. What happened to Cleitophon in the Rl'publil"? He fell silent. He was heard neither from nor about again."' Such silence, I propose, is significant. One reason why is that Socratl'.\'behavior in thl' Cleitophon is the same as Cleitophon's in the Republic. There is an uncanny mirroring effect between these two dialogues. In the dialogue named after him, Cleitophon is frustrated by what he perceives as Socrates' inability to move beyond protreptic speech. Cleitophon himself has already been "protrepticized" to the extent that he is able to identify conventional wisdom and values as mere opinions. He has been persuaded to rely, not on the traditional standards of the polis, but on his own powers of reason and discourse in order to achieve happiness. But instead of pursuing real wisdom, a truthful account of what is good, as a replacement for the conventional wisdom he has abandoned, he has turned to rhetoric. Rhetoric, at least as Plato understands it, is intimately connected with relativism. Its purpose is to teach men how to speak effectively regardless of what aims they hope to attain. It assists men in pursuing what they believe to be to their advantage; it does not teach what truly is advantageous. In the Republic Cleitophon asserts his relativism and then falls silent. In the Cleitophon he explains why he is a relativist: he is not convinced that logos can transcend its merely protreptic stage or that knowledge can replace opinion. In this dialogue it is Socrates who falls silent. There is a gap between these two men, one that logos does not seem able to mend. I n the Republic Cleitophon suggests that the just is what seems advantageous to the ruling body. The ruler might decide that it isjust to murder everyhody over the age of ten or to make philosophers into kings. There is no rational or moral difference between these two acts if justice is strictly a matter of seeming. To put this point in stronger terms, if justice is only a matter of seeming, there is no reason to discuss the respective merits of these or any other conflicting actions. If logos is the attempt to differentiate the true from the false, and the good from the bad, logos is, givl'n Ckitophon's proposal, pointless noise.

lo(i

Is

L()(;OS

UNCONDITIONALLY

Cleitophon dramatically incarnates a fundamental human possibility for Plato. His long speech in the Cleitophonshows why he turns away from logos: he is persuaded that Socrates can do no more than exhort his listeners to pursue philosophy and the study of justice. Since Socrates does not seem able to ground such exhortation, Cleitophon sees no difference between him and Thrasymachus. As such, the relativism (the denial of grounds) of the Sophist is preferable. In the Republic Cleitophon actually states his thoroughly relativistic proposal. His silence thereafter is fully consistent with his statement. No analysis or rational discussion of his position and its merits would, on his terms, be fruitful. In neither of these two dialogues is Cleitophon refuted by Socrates. It is in this sense that Plato incorporates Cleitophon's accusation within his own conception of logos. Plato, I suggest, knows that there is a gap here that logos cannot mend. Socrates can refute only those with whom he can converse, and thorough relativists such as Cleitophon can refuse or ignore conversation and yet remain consistent. Philosophical dialogue of the sort Socrates wishes to engender depends upon an unconditional affirmation of logos, a value that for it is "axiomatic." An axiom must be presumed before further arguments can commence. Since all arguments or proofs require that axioms be used, axioms cannot themselves be proven or defended by the arguments they generate. To attempt to do so would beg the question: in the very attempt to prove the axiom the axiom would be assumed. Precisely this impasse plagues logos and constitutes the gap between Socrates and Cleitophon. Logos must presume that it is good in order to argue that it is good. Therefore, it cannot demonstrate that it is good because such a demonstration would have to assume what it purports to prove, namely that logos is good. There is no refutation of a thorough relativist for he can, while remaining quite consistent, refuse to acknowledge the goodness of philosophical dialogue, of logos, and then refuse to argue at all. Unfortunately (for logos) there is no argument that can, without begging the question, establish the goodness of argumentation. Socrates can only refute those who, like Thrasymachus, affirm the goodness of such dialogue. (This Thrasymachus did by including within his own position the possibility of attaining knowledge about real advantage. Since he stated that it was possible to differentiate between correct and incorrect laws, he implies that it is reasonable and good to have discussions about value.) By contrast, Cleitophon (like Callicles) is not a teacher but only a practitioner of rhetoric. As such, he feels no obligation to include a comparable affirmation of knowledge in his "position." He cannot be refuted for he does not acknowledge the fundamental axiom presupposed by all argumentation. Thorough relativism, the enemy of logos, is a deeply serious problem

Is Lm;os

Ul'iCONDITIONALLY

107

hecause it testifies to the fact that rational argumentation depends upon a value judgment: that it is good to pursue the argument, to strive to replace opinion with knowledge. It is precisely this judgment that animates Socrates' beautiful speeches. But because it is a value judgment it is subject to rejection by someone asserting that values are relative to the ones upholding them. As a result, the very project of logos now seems dependent upon a judgment that cannot itself be secured by argumentation. In other words, this project is initiated, and perhaps sustained, not by a demonstration of its value, but by jJrotreptic. In a certain, frightening, sense, Descartes was right: ancient philosophers do no more than encourage and exhort; they do not actually teach or know. Cleitophon's presence in the Republic is a surd, an irrational interruption, that is never truly removed, even if it remains silent. Indeed, Cleitophon's silence here, and Socrates' in the Cleitoplwn, hint at a terrible truth about logos. Silence looms as an irremediable possibility. It hovers on the horizon of philosophical dialogue, both limiting and threatening it. I do not only, or even primarily, refer to silence in the literal sense. Instead, I refer to any form of speaking that does not, and cannot, conceive of a reason for itself to continue. Any form of speaking that cannot answer, or at least address, the question "Why should I speak rather than fall silent?" is itself equivalent to "silence" in the sense I use the term. One could, for example, believe there is no reason to speak, but continue to do so for the sake of habit or manners or for the physiological sensation it produces. If, however, there is no reason to speak, no reason to be reasonable, then speaking is finally indistinguishable from, and simply a noisier version of, silence; it is purposeless chatter. (; There is a gap, a chasm, that looms between Socrates and Cleitophon. 7 Socrates cannot refute this opponent; and Plato does not disguise this fact. Instead, he integrates it into his dialogue. The whole dialogue, then, becomes a peculiar and complex blend of positions and characters. The most prominent feature of most of Plato's dialogues is their protreptic sheen: "Love and pursue logos," they tell us again and again, "for here lies your happiness." But in many of the dialogues, such as the Republic, there is a softly stated but unmistakable presence, one that conditions, that qualifies, that tarnishes the bright luster of the protreptic. This is Cleitophon, a man who rejects the basic axiom of logos and who knows enough about himself to resist the temptation to argue for his rejection. Plato's shortest dialogue is titled after this character (whose name, perhaps ironically, literally means "illustrious voice"). I propose that despite its length it is a work of disturbing importance. Socrates' silence testifies to the precariousness of logos for it forces us to ask, Is it really true that log-os is uJlconditionally good?

B

EROS AND LOGOS

Logos: "My mind begins to wander, to whirl; I think I may go mad. Can this be? I no better than Thrasymachus because I cannot refute Cleitophon? I cannot break beyond this fact. I ... one voice among many and not a king who with only his words shapes the world? I ... not unconditionally good? I am but a desire and all desires emanate from the same source, the human beings who desire; and this source, this vast mass of struggle, cannot possibly sustain the claim of being unconditionally good. I fear the old prophet had eyes; I fear I have said too much. Am I guilty of the very crime of which I accused others?" Logos trembles, ... and well it should. It recalls those moments of discomfort: the begging of the question, Protagoras' artful dodge, the space Cleitophon carves out for himself; an inviolable space immune from Socratic refutation. It is just this immunity that may drive logos mad, for it reveals a weakness not before divined. Logos, the commitment to finding the truth, has now recognized a most painful truth: It cannot refute the radical, the consistent and selfconscious, relativist. Therefore, logos must admit that, like the relativist, it itself is essentially a matter of desire. It wants to say what is right and wrong, true and false. It exhorts its listeners to want the same. But it cannot ground this desire. That is, it cannot prove that as a desire it deserves any privilege or is in any way definitive of being human. Such a demonstration would require that logos prove, without begging the question, that relativism, the "claim" that all desires are ultimately equal in their baselessness and that the realm of human values is therefore no more than an arena for the struggles of power, is false. And this, as we have seen, it cannot do. Therefore, the classic assertion, that logos is unique and more than one desire among many, the vaunted claim that logos is unconditionally good, is called into question. And yet ... logos is not yet prepared to relinquish its throne. It has, however, recognized the force of Cleitophon's charge. (This it did in the form of Socrates' silence.) Therefore, if it is to defend itself, it must do so a different footing than that it initially used. It must part ways with Aristotle who, with clear and happy spirit, articulated a beautiful vision of a world "out there" in which logos was at home. Aristotle's was a theoretical vision of an objective world. Now the emphasis must shih to a world "in here." Logos must take its bearings and build its case from the fact that it is a desire. What logos will next argue is that, yes, it is but a desire, but that, llO,

desires are not all equal. Human desire has an ordered structure with at the pinnacle. This conclusion will be similar to that offered by Aristotle who stated (in his Nicomacheall Ethics) that desire is "not empty and vain." Because of this assumption, Aristotle concluded that there must be a "highest good." In other words, he claimed that hecause desire was not empty and vain, because life was not the objects of desire have an order. Some objects must be higher than others and, finally, this sequence must terminate in that which is desired for its own sake. If this were not the case, the objects of desire would proceed indefinitely; nothing would be intrinsically satisfying and desire would be empty and vain. Aristotle's implicit argument was valid: [{desire is not empty and vain, ifit is not indefinitely expanding or utterly without structure, then some of desire are higher than others. But this doesn't say much. Aristotle simply assumed (against potential opponents like Callicles and Cleitophon) that life was "meaningful," that desire had a termination point. But what if he was wrong? Now logos must do more. It must actually demonstrate, rather than simply assume, that desire has a structure. What follows will attempt that task; it will be a "subjective analysis," an analysis of desire itself. What follows is a discussion of a passage from Plato's dialogue, the Symposium. H

The setting is a drinking party in which the guests entertain themselves with speeches. The topic, they decide, will be eros, a word which in both Greek and English means "love," particularly that love expressed in sexual passion. The task that Socrates and his companions give themselves is to praise eros as fully and accurately as possible. Socrates is the last official speaker and he begins his talk in typical fashion, by interrogating the speaker who immediately preceded him, a poet named Agathon. Agathon had gone along with a conventional view, that eros is to be praised as a god. Eros, he said, was the most beautiful and beauty loving of all the gods. By examining this assertion, Socrates elicits the following four characteristics of eros. First, eros (says Socrates) is always "of something." Assume P loves. If so, then P loves or desires some A. (The addition of "desires" will be explained shortly.) Eros must have an object. I n this regard it is like consciousness. When sensing or thinking, it is impossible not to sense or think of something; similarly, when loving, it is impossible not to love something. To put this in somewhat technical terms, eros is "intentional." (To verify this, one needs only to try an experiment: Try to think without thinking of something. It seems impossible. Now try to love without being directed toward, without loving some

110

Is

LOGOS UNCONDITIONAl.LY

GOOD?

object; try simply loving. It is, it seems, impossible. To love is to love something.) The second characteristic of eros is this: the something, the A, that is loved by P is not possessed by P. When I am hungry and desire food, it is because my stomach lacks food. When my stomach is totally full, I feel no hunger. If I am weak or sick, then I desire to be strong or well. The general statement "If P loves A, then P does not possess A" thus seems to hold. Eros is "negative." Ths statement above, however, cannot quite stand as formulated, for there is an obvious counterexample to it. If I now possess health, I may still desire to be healthy. Socrates explains this by saying if P loves A, and P possesses A, then P desires to possess A in the future. Since this third statement contradicts the second (because it allows P to love and to possess A), we should amend the second: If P loves A, then P does not possess A permanently and completely. If I am healthy and still desire health, it is because health requires continual maintenance to be preserved. These few remarks (which occur from 199c to 20Ic) decisively shape Socrates' later discussion, for they disclose the third characteristic of eros: It is essentially temporal. Human beings are caught in the flow of time. We are incomplete, or finite, and aware of our incompleteness. We are continually lacking and so we are continually loving. We love and want what we lack, and our lives are spent in perpetual striving to overcome incompleteness (or finitude). Aristophanes, the famous comic poet and an earlier speaker, had touched upon this theme earlier when he had said, "The desire and the pursuit of the whole is called eros" (l92elO). For Aristophanes, however, wholeness was found only in sexual union with a well-matched partner (accompanied by a healthy dose of religous piety). In other words, Aristophones, like most comedians, retained the ordinary meaning of "eros." Socrates does not. For him, Aristophanes' was an insufficient account of eros because, as we will see, human beings can never be fully satisfied, can never achieve the completeness we crave, through intercourse with other human beings. The first three characteristics all rest on the fourth, which is simply assumed throughout Socrates' discussion. Eros is a desire, a going after its object. Eros is a motive force: it impels the one loving to pursue, to move toward, an object. The Greek word for desire is epithumia. Let us, therefore, describe eros as "epithumotic.,,9 Armed with these four characterizations of eros, Socrates refutes Agathon who had said that eros was the most beautiful and beauty loving of the gods. Since eros is of what it lacks, if it is the love of beauty it lacks, and so cannot itself have, beauty. Indeed, it is clearly implied hy Socrates' analysis that if eros loves beauty, thell it call1lot 1)(' a g-od (lor ill gCIH'r;t\

Is

LOGOS UNCONDITIONALLY

GOOD?

I II

the gods do not lack anything and so they surely should not lack beauty). Agathon quickly admits that his own account cannot be sustained. Socrates then dispenses with him and tells a story. He had once, he says, been instructed in erotic matters by a priestess named Diotima. She had put him through an interrogation in much the same way that Socrates himself had examined Agathon. Socrates too had once believed that eros wa5 a god, both beautiful and beauty loving. When he learned that eros could not be such he was at a loss. If eros was not good and beautiful, he asked, was it then ugly and bad? If eros was not an immortal god, was it then mortal? Diotima rebuked him sharply for thinking only in these extreme terms. Socrates, she says, had ignored the possibility of the "in-between." Eros is inbetween a human and a god, the mortal and the immortal. It is a "daimon," a spirit (201e-202e). Diotima devotes the rest of her speech to articulating the structure of this daimon, this "spiritual" force that shapes human lives. She is most concerned with explaining the objects of eros. This makes sense: if eros is intentional, then it is precisely the capacity to enter into relationships with objects. Therefore, to explain the structure of eros means explaining the nature and order of its objects. The first statement Diotima makes is that eros has as its object "beautiful things" (204d3). Quickly, and without argument, she substitutes "the good" for the "beautiful" (204e 1). (This substitution is not quite as arbitrary as it sounds: the Greek word for beautiful, kalos, has "moral" overtones.) If P loves, P loves and desires to possess A. If P loves and desires A, it is because A is felt or believed to be good (to be attractive, beautiful). P expects that attainment of A will result in a state of affairs better than the one not including A. This can be reformulated (in terms used earlier): the object of P's eros is the attainment of "happiness" (eudaimonia: 204e7), that state of affairs achieved when good things, beautiful things, are possessed. It is, therefore, what we all want. All this may sound quite "idealistic." But in fact it is not. From the thief to the best of women, all action is directed toward some goal that is thought to bring advantage. This notion of advantage, here called the good or the beautiful, can be conceived in an indefinite number of ways. But the point is that human beings always go after what they take to be good. In other words, Diotima has added a fifth characteristic to the list: Desire is "teleological" in the sense that the object for the sake of which, toward which, human beings move must be 'Judged" to be good by them. This process of judging is rarely made articulate. The thief who steals t he car rarely bothers to attempt to articulate why he believes (incorrectly) that stich an action is good. But he does believe, however inarticulately, t hat what he does is for his good. If he did not, he would not do it. Diotima's poiJlt is that, in principle, every action propelled by desire

112

Is

LOGOS UNCONDITIONALLY

GOOD?

could be made articulate. If P desires to move toward A, it is because P "thinks," however inarticulately, that A is good. If P did not think A were good, P would go elsewhere. In sum, "human beings love nothing other than the good" (205e7-206a I ).10

The next stage of Diotima's analysis begins with a crucial transition. If P loves A, A is thought or felt to be good and so P desires A to be his own in order to be happy. Furthermore, P desires A always to be his own (206a9). The desire for what is good is the desire for the permanent possession of what is good. Soon this is reformulated even further: eros is eros of immortality (207a3), in the form of the immortal possession of the good. At a first hearing this description sounds farfetched, even mystical, and far from the ordinary lives of human beings. Does it make any sense to say that we want to be immortal? If it does, it is because of the earlier discussion Socrates had with Agathon. There it was agreed that eros is epithumotic and necessarily contains within it a negative moment: we desire what we do not have. Eros is teleological: we desire what is good. Eros is essentially temporal: we desire good things whose possession extends into the future. Ultimately, what we do not have is immortality. Immortality, therefore, is the ultimate object of desire. It is what we all want whether we say, admit, know it or not. Think of it this way: If you ever got totally what you wanted, you would cease to desire. Since desire is a necessary condition of life, if you ever got totally what you wanted you would cease to be alive as a human being. This can mean one of two things: Either you would be dead or you would become immortal. Rarely do human beings want to die. Therefore, insofar as you desire to get totally what you want, you desire immortality. Perhaps Diotima's position can be made more clear by considering a possible objection to it. Assume a woman desires some (A) even though, or just because, it is an object only to be temporarily possessed. A woman might desire to scale a mountain even though she knows she must return to the plains. She might argue that mountain climbing is made even more attractive just because she must return to the plains. Diotima's response could take the following form: Assume A is an object that fulfills a desire. If the woman desires to possess A on a temporary basis, there must be some reason why the woman does not desire A on a permanent basis. There must be some desirable object B that supplements, replaces, or conditiollS the desirability of A. But A has been assumed to be fulfilling and so it should not require any supplementation. Therefore, either A is not fulfilling, in which case some other ohject (B) is IIlore desirahle, or A

Is Locos

UNCONDITIONAl.LY

COOD?

must be desired as a permanent possession. (If the latter option IS chosen, then the same analysis would be applied to B.) The mountain climber might say, "You're crazy. Immortality is the furthest thing from my mind. I want to climb a mountain, but I do not want this as a permanent possession; part of the thrill of the mountaintop is that I know I must return to the plains." If the woman says this, she actually denies that what she wants is to climb a mountain. The mountaintop (call it A) only seems to be object of her desire; in reality, she desires to have a complex feeling that includes both the thrill of the mountaintop and the security of the plains (call it B). What she wants is the complex object A + B (call it C). This, not A, is what she wants. If she argues that she wants C only temporarily, some other object, D, will arise, and then we will have to say that she really wants C + D, or E. And if she thinks about it she will have to admit that, finally, it is E that she wants ... and wants as a permanent possession. An opponent might object: "What if there is no termination point; what if we desire an indefinite array of objects, none of which we desire permanently?" On this account, we love the seeking of pleasures and goods and neither permanence nor total satisfaction. For the opponent, the fact that the objects of desires neither are orderly nor terminate is not a problem but a pleasure. Again, however, the opponent cannot explain why any object is not in itself totally fulfilling. Why is there a need to return to the plains at all? Why not perish on mountaintops? Human beings are restless and never quite satisfied; we move on. We do so, not because all are equally unfulfilling, but because we seek an that is completely fulfilling. If this weren't the case (if this weren't the belief that implicitly is operative in us), then there would be no motive force to keep us going from one object to the next. It is our temporality, the fact that we are in and of time, that makes Diotima's account compelling. It is the awareness of our temporality that shapes and pushes forth our actions. Only because we are aware of the Row of time in which we are caught do we move, strive to achieve, push ourselves forward. I wake up and realize that this morning feels much the same as yesterday's. I realize that soon this morning will disappear and become tomorrow, that I am caught in a now that cannot be stopped, cannot be reversed. That even my youngest child will soon age. I look back at yesterday's morning and realize it is gone, vanished; only a memory, usually dim, remains. And I understand that this very morning will soon be an equally dim yesterday. I imagine my dying and realize that just before its moment this very morning will be as insubstantial as yesterday's morning is now. I imagine my grandfather, soon to die, and understand that his looking i>;lck at his past is flO difTcrt'llt than mine. We are all caught.

This is a very common feeling. We think about dying and the flowing away of our lives. Often it is easy to feel swept away in the current of time and sympathize with the famous lines of the deranged Macbeth: To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow, Creeps in this petty pace from day to day, To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to dusty death. OUl, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no Illore; it is a lale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.

If Diotima is wrong, then Macbeth is right. If there is no way to get out of time, then time is but a succession of "syllables" pacing toward their end. Diotima tells us that we desire life to be more than a petty path of yesterdays leading to dusty death. Macbeth has lost that desire; and he is a madman. We desire to escape, to stand outside, the flow of time. When Diotima says this she is not being overly idealistic or mystical. She is being realistic about ordinary human experience. We want to jump out of time. Only by understanding this desire can we hope to understand, and affirm, who we are. But of course there is a basic problem. How can we, ever aging, 'Jump out of time?" What sense could this phrase possibly make? How can we gain access to or make contact with that which is not finite? At this point a metaphor takes command of the passage: Human beings are pregnant. Our lives are spent in giving birth to that which will remain when we are gone. The parent's child, the family legacy, the fame earned on the basketball court, the poet's poem ... all represent the human urge to overcome finitude. As Aristophanes had put it, even in sexual embrace the soul desires something else that it cannot articulate, but only intuit, namely wholeness (192d). Diotima supplies the articulation that the comedian leaves out. She is willing to explain how it is that finite beings desire and attempt to give birth to that which is immortal. It is here that Diotima launches into what has become known as the "ascent passage" (21Oa-212a). Here she supplies the analysis of desire, of eros, as a hierarchical structure. By so doing, she permits logos to agree with its accuser that it is a desire and to deny the further and most damaging charge that it is on a par with all other desires. If desire is structured hierarchically, then logos, through a psychological argument, can still make a grand bid to occupy the pinnacle.

Is Locos

UNCONDITIONALLY

GOOD?

I I!')

TlIP Asccnt Passage

210a4

He who is to proceed correctly in this malleI' [the initiate] must begin, when young, to go toward beautiful bodies and iii-st. if the one guiding guides correctly, he must love one body [stage I] and there engender beautiful logos [stage 21- II Next he must realize that the beauty found in any single body is kindred to that found in any other body. and if it is necessary for him to hunt the beautiful in form. it is silly not to suppose that the beauty in all bodies is one and the same. Having had this insight. he must become a lover of all beautiful bodies and slacken his excessive love of one by being contemptuous and counting it something small.

2 JOb6 After this. it is necessary [1"01- the one pmceeding correctly] to suppose that the beauty in souls is more honorable than that in body [stage 3]. The result of this is that even if someone is but slightly attractive. if he is fine in his soul he will be satisfying and the one proceeding correctly will love and care. and seek and give birth to such logos that makes the young better. As a result. he will be constrained to behold the beautiful in institutions and laws and to see that the beautiful is all bound together in kinship [stage 4]; and so he will suppose the beauty of the body to be something small. 210c6

After institutions it is necessary [for the one guiding] to lead [the initiate] to the sciences in order that he might see the beauty of the sciences [stage 5]. And looking at beauty on a grand scale. no longer is he a trivial and who loves only an individual, either the beauty of a child or of man or one institution. but turning towards and seeing the of the beautiful he gives birth to much beautiful and magnificel1t logus and many thoughts in the abundance of philosophy 6].

2lOd6

This [the intiate] does until being strengthened and nourished he looks upon one particular sort of knowledge. which is of the following sort of beauty. Try to pay attention now as closely as you can. For whoever has loved pruperly up to this point. and has seen the beautiful things in proper order and has thus reached the telos of the erotic juurney. suddenly sees a beauty amazing in its nature.

210e4

And this, Socrates. is that for the sake of which all the previous labors were. First of all. it always is, and it neither comes to be nor passes away; nor does it increase or diminish; nor is it beautiful in one way, but ugly in another; nor is it sometimes beautiful and sometimes not; nor is it beautiful relative to something, but ugly relative to something else so that it is beautiful to some but ugly to others. Nor in turn will the beauty appear to him like a lace or a hand or anything else that partakes of the body; nor is it a logos or a science; nor does it exist in any ol.her place, for example in an animal or ill the t'art h or t he heavens or anywhere else; but itsell

I 16

Is

LOGOS UNCONDITIONALLY

GOOD?

together with itself it is always singularly formed and the rest of the beautiful things in some way participate in it. Unlike any which come to be and pass away, it neither becomes more nor less, and it suffers nothing.

Diotima's account is not an idealistic or "other-worldly" story of mystical transcendence. Instead, it is an analysis of what happens during the development of a hypothetical (and accessible) human desire. I\:ot surprisingly, the "initiate," the one being initiated into the mysteries of eros, begins with the love of a single body. What is surprising is the fact that this first stage, this first and most familiar desire, soon slackens and its is counted as "something small." Why? Is Diotima a prude who finds bodies distasteful? I don't think so. After the very first stage of loving individuals "beautiful logos" is generated. Eros, Diotima rightly explains, does not remain mute. We speak to our loves, call them "beautiful," tell why we love. Bodies, in and of themselves, simply do not satisfy for very long. For whatever reason, the urge is soon felt "to give birth" to logos which supplements, and soon comes to overwhelm, touch. Our hypothetical initiate has felt the urge to speak. He generates a beautiful logos. As a result, he comes to realize that the individual body beside his is not totally satisfying. And so he moves to stage 2, love of all beautiful bodies. It is not obvious what Diotima means here. Does she allude to a bisexual Don Juan? Probably not. More likely she indicates that the production of logos leads to the realization that the extension of the word "beautiful" far outstrips any single body. What comes to the fore here is what she calls "the beautiful in form." Because of our talking we come to realize that what we love when we love even a single body is not what it seems to be. The initiate says to his beloved, "I love you because you are beautiful." This is a logos, a speech produced by eros. The speech provides a means for the initiate to come to a realization: The word "beautiful" he has used does not exclusively refer to the body lying beside his. It refers to all bodies that can be described as "beautiful." There is a movement implied by logos, a movement from particularity (this beautiful body right here) to universality (to the form of beauty shared by all beautiful bodies). Language drives us upward, away from particularity. It forces us to realize that what we want is not an individual; we want more. This first transition of the ascent passage, from stage one to two, is paradigmatic of the whole process of ascent. It is because we talk that the objects of our eros change. Logos, which is produced by human erotic energy, provides a means for having a "realization." Log'Os functions like a lens through which we see the objects we love. When there is a disparity between what we are saying- and what we art' lovillg-, then a need is kit

Is L()(;os

UNCONDITIONALLY

GOOD?

1 17

to move on. A single beautiful body simply isn't satisfying to one who speaks, for speaking refers to the beautiful in form. By speaking the initiate realizes (sees) that the single body does not fully satisfy and in this sense must be counted as something small. (A warning: It is obviously not necessary that every person who loves corne to this realization. It is possible that someone can spend an entire life loving only particular bodies. What Diotima wishes to explain is the structure of the process that is engendered by dissatisfaction at the vari·ous stages. The motive force animating such dissatisfaction is eros and it finds its expression in logos. Once the initiate comes to realize that there is a discrepancy between the logos used to comment upon his beloved at a particular stage and that beloved itself, he feels a lack and is driven forward, upward. He is driven to harmonize his logos and his eros. That the initiate feels so dissatisfied is a contingent matter; it need not occur. Diotima's is to explain what foll()ws when it does occur.) The initiate goes on to stage three, the love of souls. Here there is another realization, namely that the object of eros is not bodily at all. A body is necessarily particularized and the initiate's love is now for the beautiful in form, for the universal. Therefore, he must redirect his eros to the soul, which he takes to be the locus of universality. The soul, not the body, is the origin of logos, and it was the generation of "beautiful logos" that sparked the initial drive toward universality. Our initiate now realizes that genuine satisfaction comes through talking. As a result, he can be attracted by someone (like Socrates) whose body is ugly but whose soul is beautiful. This realization brings with it stage four, the love of institutions and laws or, we might say, the love of the polis. Here eros is not concerned with individuals at all, for the polis is not simply an aggregate of particular bodies. It is a unified entity capable on its own of commanding the loyalty and passions of its citizens. The political person loves, not individuals, but the "soul" of the polis, its principles, ideals, history. These are disclosed through logos, which is (or at least used to be) the medium of political life. Although she is quite vague about this stage, it is possible to make sense of what Diotima is talking about here. The process of wanting more, sparked by our talking, takes us beyond individual bodies to souls. Again, this is not idealism or prudishness; it is a description of what happens to people with powerful desires. They want something more than individuals. They want to he talked about. They want their words to reach far. They wallt to he n'("()gni/t'd hy the polis, and not just by their individual 1ll'1()\'l·ds.Slich n'(ognitioll call t;jke many forms; one might desire fame,

I I

Is

LOGOS UNCONDITIONALLY

GOOD?

political power, literary influence, the good feeling of deeds applauded as well done. Diotima does not spell any of this out. But her basic point, that because of logos the objects of eros progress upward, is clear and compelling. Diotima is virtually silent about both the fourth ("the political") and the fifth stage of the ascent. The latter is only described as "the beauty ofthe sciences." She appears eager to arrive at the sixth and highest stage in the development of eros, philosophical logos. Politics and the sciences are briefly mentioned and then soon left behind. We are not told why. An obvious inference is that it is because neither is fully satisfying, and the ascent passage presents the structural development of a soul in search of genuine satisfaction. But why are these two human activities unsatisfying? First, to politics. (I label stage four as "the political" even though I just acknowledged that there are many ways of interpreting what Diotima means here. I do this for two reasons. First, "political" is a very broad term. It refers to all public activity directed not toward the privacy of individuals, but towards the polis. Second, I think that when she says "institutions and laws" Diotima has politics [in a rather straightforward sense] in mind. The Athenians were an intensely political people, and it was a given that the most ambitious among them would seek political recognition. [In Greek, the word for "ambitious" is philotimos,loving of honor.] In what follows, then, I am presenting in skeletal form a Platonic critique of political activity.) In concrete political terms, the polis always suffers from factionalism. It is riddled with contention and can never become either fully harmonious or just. This is due precisely to the erotic nature of human beings. There are always individuals (like Callicles) who seek "to have more" than their fair There is among some of the citizens an urge to tyrannize, a desire for power. This is simply a specific application of Diotima's general teaching: eros is the desire for completeness, for total satisfaction. And one variant of such a desire is political. As Socrates puts it in the Republic, "eros has from old been called a tyrant" (573b6). Eros drives, it pushes; those with the strongest desires desire all. Political eros, therefore, issues in the desire for complete rule, for tyranny. The polis is a conglomerate of competing desires, of competing speeches. Each politician speaks to the public (or, in a system less democratic than the Athenians', to his competitor), but only to advocate a specific political program. The goal is not realization of a universally just city, but the fulfillment of a particular desire. Eros cannot be controlled, these speeches cannot be purged of their particularity, and so the city cannot be made either fully just or secure. I I Political logos, therefore, is necessarily limited and ullsatisfyill).!;.The political realm is a cauldron of

Is

LOGOS UNCONDITIONALLY

119

competition. If a politician's goal is total satisfaction, he has gone into the wrong business. This point can be reformulated: Earlier we saw that eros seeks that which is immortal and so nonhuman. Since the city is strictly a human affair, eros cannot be satisfied through politics. Upon realizing this, the initiate must again metamorphize the object of his eros. He turns to the sCiences. Diotima is almost totally silent here about stage five. Presumably the vision of beauty gained through the study of the sciences is a form of intellectual satisfaction. Imagine the following scenario. For years our hypothetical initiate was driven by a desire to make a career in the polis. He directed his considerable ambition toward political activity. But he finally became frustrated. Politics, he learned, always requires compromise and capitulation and less than perfect solutions to its problems. The political man is forever pitted against others of his kind. His logos must, therefore, continually take into account what these others will say. Politics finally becomes ugly and after a while our initiate realizes that he desires something clean, something complete. In response he turns away from the city and toward anyone of the particular sciences such as history, mathematics, or biology. Here he engages an object free from the hurries of human interference. The object doesn't vary, doesn't tantalize. The logos his science affords him need not direct itself to other human logoi that aim to thwart it. There is no need to compromise. He studies and learning pleases him. But soon even this experience becomes unsatisfying. We wish Diotima had said more about why. It must be because, like politics, the sciences are partial and eros desires completeness. The problem is specifying the exact nature of their incompleteness. Perhaps this is a result of the fact that the sciences proceed on the basis of unproven assumptions (axioms), or categorical distinctions that are not made explicit. Perhaps the individual sciences are unable to give a full account of their foundations and what exactly it is that makes them sciences. Perhaps it is because they cannot give an account of their own goodness. In any case, they are partial, they "cut off' a portion of reality and study it. Biology, for example, studies only one small subject: living beings. Mathematics is only concerned with abstract magnitudes. Our initiate, a man driven by eros, wants more. He wants a logos of all things. He turns toward philosophy, the love of wisdom. The initiate turns away from, for example, biology, mathematics, or history, and toward "the great sea of the beautiful" where "he gives birth to many beautiful and magnificent logoi and thoughts in unstinting philosophy." What is the object to which the initiate finally turns? To what does this philosophicd logos rekr? Typically this is called by scholars "the Idea

12()

Is

LOGOS l:NCOXDITIONALLY

GOOD?

(or Form) of the beautiful," although this phrase itself is not used here. At the pinnacle of the ascent, the initiate sees a "certain beauty" which is unchanging, complete, absolute (that is, nom·elative). This is "beauty itself," and it is the only object capable of satisfying fully human desire. Beauty itself is that which makes possible the beauty found in all particular all these objects "participate" in it. It is perfect beauty found not in any particular manifestation, but only in the "Idea."" Philosophy, the attempt to articulate the vision of beauty itself, is the attempt to satisfy the highest human desire. The only object capable of accomplishing this is the Press, \989). 31. This definition comes from the Hf'jJUiJlic and will be discussed below. 32. Nietzsche. The Will to Power. no. 429 (New York: Random lIouse, 19(7). For the connection between :-.Jietzscheand Callides see the appendix to f.R. Dodds's commentary on the Gorgia., (Oxford: Oxf(Jl"(1 U nivcrsil y Press, 19!)9). titled "Socra!t's, Callides, and Nietzsche." 33. :-.Jietzsche,Thus St}(JlirZamtlwstm, .Sl). This is from Kaufmann with some smallmodifications. :14. I have discussed this issue at length in "Socrates' Use of the Techne-AnaJogy." JUllY/wl oj thl' His/on' oj Pitilo.lojJity24 (l9H6), 10.

12

Non:s

:{5. "Dwwtotato.l" is somewhat ambiguous here. In this context it mtans "most capable." In others, it could well mtan "most powerful." 36. In olher dialogues Socrates also formulates, or ref()rmulates, an opponent's claim to makt it include profession of a techne. I think, for txample, of (;orgias 449a, lOll S30b, Channide.1 165c ("rpi.,teme"is used here, but in this context is synonymous with "techne"), and Repuhlic 332c. 37. Nussbaum also finds him quite sympathetic: The Fragility of (;/Jodne.\s, 89-121. So does Rorty: Philo,lotillYand the Mirror '1 Nalure, 157, For an extended dd'ense of Protagoras ste D. Loenen, i'm/agora,1 and the (;reek Community (Amsterdam: 1940). My translation should bewmpared with that found in the Loeb edition. I occasionally omit some lines in Ol'der to shorten the text. 38. The iss lit of myth will be discussed in the two sections titled "Tht Philosopher and the POtt." 39. See, for example, Loenen, I'rotagora.1and the Greek Community, 22-23, 40, "[)ikaio.\une" and ".I0tJhrosune"replace "aido,I" and "dike."

41. I refer to 329c where Socrates abruptly changes directions and begins the "unily of virt ue" argument. 42. A view somewhat similar to my own is presented by A,W.H, Adkins in "Arete, Techne, Democracy and the Sophists," Journal of Hellenic Studies, 93 (1973): 3-12. 43. This is in stark contrast to Socratic myths where the soul figures so prominently. Consider, for example, the "palinode" of the Pha.edrus. 44. C.C.W. Taylor, Plato: Protagoras (Oxford: Clarendon Plato Series, 1976), IOI. 45, Protagoras' fragment on religion reads: "Concerning the gods I cannot know either that they exist or that they do not exist, or what form they might have, for there is much to prevent one's knowing: the obscurity of the subject and the shortness of man's life." (The text is The Older Sophists, edited by Rosamond Sprague [Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1972], 20.) My view diverges sharply from the more typical one, such as that held by Loenen, that Protagoras and Callicles are extremely different kinds of characters. My own, and I believe Plato's, view is that Prolagoras is simply more artful in disguising his posilion. 46, Stanley Rosen has made a similar point in a series of complex and useful writings. I refer to his Hermeneutics as Politics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), especially "Transcendental Ambiguity: The Rhetoric of the Enlightenment." Also see his "A Central Ambiguity in Descartes," in The Ancients and the ModemI' (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989). 22-36, 47. The word "fable" appears on page 4 in the Di"COwoi·. For a discussion of what Descanes mtans by it, see Etienne (;ilson's text and commentary on the Discourse (Paris: 19(7), In ciling page numbers I refer to the standard Adam and Tannery edition, Oeuvres de Descartes(Paris: 1897-1910). I use the English translation of Donald A. Cress (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1980). Cress includes the standard pagination in his edition. 48. Gilson's commentary,

109-19, has a detailed discussion of Descartes' curriculum.

49. Gilson, pp. 130-31, states lhat Des(:artes probably had Seneca and the Stoics in mind here. Even so, his remarks would seem to apply biirly to logos as well. flO. This section refers

to Phaerio 89d-91c. It should be noted that Socrates explicitly says that logoi are not like human beings, most of whom are melllxu (90b4), Also, note that Socrates does use the phrase tn/me peri low !0{iOU.1 at 90b7. Finally, it's obvious that Descartes himself speaks of "morals ... the highest and most perfect moral system,

NOTES

213

which presupposes a complete of the other sciences and is the ultimate level of wisdom" (principles of Philosophy, 14). I shall comment on this line shortly. 51. I.e COI'busier here comes to mind. 52. The more complete presentation of the method is given in his Rules/in the Dirprtio/l ot thl'Mind.

53. The point I make here, which could be described as a critique of the Enlightenement, is surely not original. Rosen has made versions of it numerous times. From a different perspective, so have Horkheimer and Adorno in a work like Dinlnoli!" 01 Enlighll'1l1t1fnt, trans. John Cumming (New York: Herder and Herder, 1972). The literature criticizing the "Cartesian" scientific world is voluminous. To return to the last point made in note 50: It is obvious that in my discussion of Descartes I have said nothing about his "theology" or his other works. These, one could argue, are precisely his attempt to comment upon the world of human significance. I believe that finally a reading of these works would confirm what I have said so far, but in this book I do not document that assertion. Attempting to do so would me into a scholarly argument that would go beyond the limits of this short section. 54. Hiram Caton, The Origin afSubjectivity (New Haven: Yale UnivCl"sity Press, 197:{), 56. Caton here is voicing agreement with the position of Gilson and Alquie. The metaphor of the tree of knowledge comes from the Principles of Philosophy, 14. The key to Cartesian "morality" is "generosity": "I believe that true generosity, which causes a person's self-esteem to be as great as it may legitimately be, has only two components. The first consists in his knowing that nothing truly belongs to him but this freedom to dispose his volitions ... The second consists in his feeling within himself a firm and constant resolution to use [his freedom) well-that is, never to lack the will to undertake and carry out whatever he judges to be best" (Principles, 446). 55. By contrast, consider the following assertion by Rorty: "Unlike Nietzsche and Heideggel', however, the pragmatists did not make the mistake of turning against the community which takes the natural scientist as its moral hero-the community of the secular intellectual which came to self-consciousness in the Enlightenment. .lames and Dewey rejected neither the Enlightenment's choice of the scientist as moral example, nor the technological civilization which science had created. They wrote, Nietzsche and Heidegger did not, in a spirit of social hope" (Comequences of Pragmati5m, 161). Given Rorty's assumptions, I do not understand what he means when he accuses Nietzsche of making a "mistake." I think what he means by "spirit" in the last clause is actually just a mood. 5(i. Nietzsche, Thu.1 StJOkl' Zaratitnltra, 75. I have modified Kaufmann somewhat here. 57. I should note that this is a quite traditional reading of Descartes, which would be challenged by someone like Hiram Caton in his Tlu' 01"igill of Subjectivity. 5H. My text for Spinoza is The Complete WOTks of Spinow, trans. E. Curley (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986). I only cite Curley'S pagination. 59. Again, see Nussbaum, "Aristotle on Teleological Explanation," in De Motu Animalium, 59-106, for an extended discussion of this issue. (iO. See, for example, the Introduction to Philosotl/ty Ilnd Ihe Mirror 01 Nature, 3-13. 61. See Theaetetn" 17ge IT. The issue of self-reference as applied to Protagoras is frequently discussed in the literatun:. See, for example, M.F. Burnyeat, "Protagoras and SelfRefutation in Plato's Thraetetus," The Philosophical Forum, H5 (1976): 172-95. My own discussion of this issue occurs in "Can the Relativist Avoid Refuting Herself?" Philosophy and i.item/uTI', 14 (1990): 92-9H, where 1 criticize Barbara Smith's Contingencil'.1of Value.

1,1

NOTES

I n fairness to Protagoras, he never quite docs this in the I'ro/agora.\. I Ilstead, he presents a myth, a story, and not an argument designed to verify his positioll. The signiti